It’s my last week of high school, and I’ve started playing a game – whenever I do something for the last time, I make a note of it in my head. I performed my last concert in the stuffy auditorium. I took my last bite of the cafeteria’s dry chicken patties. And I pissed one, final time in one of the too-low, too-round urinals that always spray back.
The final bell rings its shrill tune. I won’t ever hear it again.
I watch through the bus window as the school disappears from sight.
The bus screeches to a halt. I stand and shove my way through the underclassmen who dangle their legs across the aisle. At the front, I thank the kindly bus driver and bid him farewell. Then, down the final few steps and out to the street. The bus continues on. It passes by a slim white car before turning the corner and it is gone. I check the boxes in my head: last, last, last.
I turn, and start to plug my earbuds in, but pause – a thunderous revving rolls through the neighborhood. I see a blur of white cut straight through my periphery, and I don’t have time to run – the white car clips up the curb and barrels through me. I’m sent sprawling across the cement, my flesh torn and leaking red hot blood. It feels like lava against my skin, tastes like the bite of steel. I take a deep breath, convinced it will be my last.
The world is drowned in black.
~
I spend an eternity submerged in the darkness, my eyes shut tight. The world and its sweat and its pain are knocking, slamming the front door with their fists. But I won’t answer. I won’t.
And then I feel the kiss of a damp towel. A gentle hand guides its smoothness across my face and down my neck. So cold, so soft. “Mr. Irving?” Her voice is soothing, and like the towel it summons me from my dreamless sleep. I open my eyes to a room I have never seen and a woman I have never met. She gasps. “You’re awake.”
“Where am I?” My throat stretches and burns as I speak, and the words come out hoarse.
“I’m Miss Judith, your caretaker. And this is nothing less than a miracle.” She holds her hands to her chest. Her arms and legs are skinny and long.
“Caretaker?” I hold one hand to my throat, and secure the other against the mattress beneath me. As I slowly lift myself to a sitting position, my body resists. My chest and my arms and my legs flash white hot pain. Everything aches. “What the hell is going on?!” I croak out.
“Your muscles have atrophied, Mr. Irving.” Miss Judith lays a delicate hand atop my pale, blue sheets and eases me back down. I’m too weak to resist. “You’ll hurt yourself if you exert yourself. Lay here, and rest.”
The room is lit with a warm, yellow glow. I listen to the whirring of the overhead fan, watch as it tousles the partition beneath it. The smell of bleach wafts up from the white tiled floors and the shiny walls. A dusty pipe runs along the ceiling. Sunspots of dark, green mildew stare back from the corner. I To my right is a window, its royal blue curtains closed. “I remember, I was hit by a car,” I say.
“It was your last day of school,” Miss Judith says. “They printed your name in the old newspaper.”
“How long has it been?”
“You must be hungry, Mr. Irving.”
“Stop calling me that,” I say. “I’d like to see my parents.”
“They visited every day,” she says, her voice quiet now. “They knew you would come back to us.”
“Where are they?” I move my hand as if to run my fingers through my hair. I find nothing, and am left to wander the dry desert of my scalp.
“They passed away, years ago.”
“But that isn’t possible.” Mom and Dad are still young. And the three of us are driving up to New York in August. They wanted to see the city with me before sending me off to NYU in the fall. How can they be dead?
Miss Judith leans over my bed and rubs her towel against my eyes, drying up the tears before they can drip down my cheeks. “I’m so sorry. But you mustn’t worry about them now. You’re starving, aren’t you? Just a minute, and I’ll fill you up.” Miss Judith swoops in and plants a kiss on my forehead. So cold, so soft. I look into her beautiful, blue eyes, and find them trembling with warmth and love and pity. She slips away, then pauses just before clicking the door shut. “Welcome to Van Winkle’s Nursing Home, Mr. Irving.”
Mr. Irving is my father. I’m Will, just Will. I run my thick, wrinkled fingers down my chest. My skin is too long for my body, and even though I feel so sweaty it is bone dry to touch. I need a mirror.
I groan as I roll onto my side. I wince. A dozen, sharp cracks ring out from my spine.
The royal blue window shades are shuttered tight. An IV stand towers over me, its bag filled with a viscous, white syrup. I trace it as it flows down through the tube and beneath my sheets. I lift my heavy, heavy arm; the needle is plugged in, but I can hardly feel it. I leave it be.
A small, white table stands by the bed. On its surface is a glass vase and a single, fake flower. I shift towards the edge of the mattress. In the rounded face of the glass I see myself, distorted. My bald skull, my sparse, gray brow, my drooping cheeks, all stretched like putty in my reflection. “Oh… oh my god.”
I remember what it felt like to be young. Somewhere inside of my new body is trapped the phantom of the past – my old body, my young, limber body tries to wriggle free.
But this is me. I am a withered old man. Wasn’t I supposed to travel the world? To study film, and make a name for myself? To meet new friends? To fall in love?
I will never eat Mom’s cooking again. I will never watch a movie with Dad again. I won’t see either of them. Never, never, never. My entire life is behind me. And this little room is where I will spend the rest of my time and where I will die.
“Don’t cry.” An old man’s voice calls out from the other side of the partition. “You heard her, didn’t you? It’s a miracle,” he croaks, “yes, a miracle.” He starts to laugh, the sound like the back-and-forth creaking of an old rocking chair.
I wipe the soft skin under my eyes. “What year is it?” I ask. But the man keeps on laughing. “What’s happened out there, in the world?”
“It’s gone to hell,” he says, “presumably.” Suddenly a hand thrusts around the near side of the curtain. The man hooks his long, dry fingers around my shoulder and squeezes tight. “But how would I know? I only woke up yesterday.”
“You mean, you were in a coma, too?” I ask.
“I know as much as you do.” He gives my shoulder one final squeeze and then pulls his arm back behind the curtain. “Your body feels wrong,” he whispers. “Mine too.”
That instant, Miss Judith swings the door open, a wide grin on her face. She’s holding two trays of food. “Mr. Irving,” she says, laying the tray in my lap. “Mr. May,” she says as she disappears around the partition. I pick at the wet mass on my tray. It’s shaped like a waffle. But it’s mushy – like someone chewed it into a paste and then molded it back into a waffle. Compared to this, the school cafeteria seems like a five-star restaurant.
Miss Judith peeks around the curtain. Her soft cheeks stretch out as she smiles. “You’ll eat for me, won’t you?”
“Do you have any syrup?”
“Oh, Mr. Irving,” she laughs, waving the thought away with her hand. “Eat.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Oh, but you are. You need to stay strong, for me. Will you eat, or shall I feed you myself?” I scoop out a sporkful of the wet mass and crush it with my teeth. Not that I need to. It’s pre-chewed. Miss Judith watches. She smiles. “Good boy.” My heart flutters in place, like a butterfly caught in a spider’s web.
Before she leaves, Miss Judith gives us each a kiss, then clicks off the lights. Blue shadow floods the room. The overhead fan whirs and whirs.
I close my eyes, but sleep will not come. I have spent years in that darkness, wasting away. I have lost everything. And soon I will lose myself. I cannot rest without the anxiety bubbling up in my stomach, urging me to open my eyes and confirm that I am still alive. I open my eyes.
It’s then that I see him, the old man, staggering around the bend of the curtain. His head hangs low. Each of his steps is heavy and uncertain. The IV stand rolls slowly behind him.“Mr. May?”
His silhouette freezes. “Brian.” He hunches over my bedside, breathing heavily. A silver thread of saliva leaks down from his lips.
“Why are you out of bed?” I brace myself against the pain and push myself up. Mr. May’s face is obscured by the darkness, but I can tell that his brow is clenched in concentration.
“I want to test something,” he says. Mr. May takes the vase from my bedside table and lifts it in the air. It drops and shatters with an icy crack. “Stay still.” He bends down and lifts one of the shards, clasping it tight between his thumb and forefinger.
“Wait! Stop it, Stop!” I scream. Mr. May places a heavy hand over my mouth, muffling my scream. I kick and wriggle and bite – sinking my teeth into his soft, too soft flesh – it tastes sour. The old man doesn’t bleed. Mr. May traces the line of my jugular with the shard, trailing down my neck, my shoulders, to my chest. And then, with a shaky hand, he digs in. I watch helplessly as the sharp edge pierces my skin, and scream and scream – yet I feel nothing. My sobbing slows as Mr. May runs the glass down my chest, peeling back a layer of fake skin. Beneath that thick rubber is my own chest – runny with sweat, pulsing with my young heart.
The door creaks open, and I curl my body inwards, concealing the shard beneath the fake flesh. “Mr. May.” Miss Judith sings his name like a lullaby. “Mr. May, why are you out of bed?” Brian stumbles away from me, holding his hands in the air. “He knocked over his vase, Miss Judith. I was helping him pick up the pieces.”
Miss Judith marches towards Brian. “You mustn’t disturb your roommate,” Miss Judith says. I watch as she places a hand against Brian’s stomach, and with a gentle shove sends him toppling over. Brian crashes against the wall and clatters to the floor, groaning. Miss Judith wipes her hand against her pants. She kneels down next to Brian. “Oh, Mr. May, you must be careful. One bad fall is all it takes.” She takes Brian’s moaning body up in her arms, showering him in kisses. “You poor thing.”
The next morning, after breakfast, Miss Judith sweeps up the shattered vase. She doesn’t replace it. She whistles a pleasant tune as she binds Brian’s ankles to the foot of his bed with rope. And then we are alone.
“Are you okay?” I whisper towards the partition.
“Swell,” Brian says, croaking. “What’s your name?”
“I’m Will.”
“Well, Will, I for one would like to get the fuck out of this place. I’m supposed to be home from college for the Summer – you know, spending time with family, seeing some old friends – and then I get pulverized by a goddamn car. And then I wake up here, trapped in an old man costume. It feels like I’m being swallowed alive.”
“I think Miss Judith hit us with her car and then kidnapped us. She must get off on this, how powerless we are.”
“She’s a psychopath,” Brian says. “I’d beat the shit out of her, if I wasn’t such a frail old bastard.”
“It’s the drugs, I bet.” I take the cord of the IV and unstick its needle. Then, I reinsert it at a shallow angle, piercing only the rubber skin. “Take out your IV, and plug it into the bodysuit.”
“I can’t live like this any longer, Will. I need to get out of this body. I need to get out of this room.”
“I know. But we have to wait, and regain our strength.”
And so we lay in our beds, trapped in cocoons of sweat and rubber. Miss Judith sings to us and kisses us. She bathes us, touching us however she pleases. We have no choice but to lay there as she plugs her catheter in and drains the piss out. We eat her paste and then shit into her hands. Totally powerless.
But I feel the cold glass against my true skin, and remember that my parents are alive and the world is waiting. During the day, I flex my arms and my legs in bed. At night, I slip out of my sheets and untie Brian’s rope. We practice walking in the dark. At first we cling to the wall, and then to each other. Gradually, we regain our strength, and grow more confident in our legs. We practice bending, then ducking, then dodging out of the way. Always listening for the creak of the door, dreading her soothing voice, the softness of her fingers. Miss Judith looms over us in the shadows.
After three weeks, we’re ready. I take the flap of loose rubber on my chest like a zipper, and peel down – slicing the bodysuit open like wrapping paper. I emerge from the chrysalis, naked, eighteen, dripping with sweat and smelling of mildew. My arms and stomach are covered in red gashes from the crash. Someone’s done a rough job of stitching up the wounds. I look once more at the bodysuit, now a mess of rolls of rubber on the floor. Never again. I unwrap its gown and slip my arms through.
I walk to the window and pull away the blue curtains. The glass is sealed with concrete.
I pass around the partition and untie the rope from around Brian’s ankles. “The window’s blocked,” I say. “We might be underground.” Brian stretches out his legs, sighing. I hand him the glass shard and he peels open his bodysuit. He climbs out of the fat, drooping skin. Brian emerges young and strong and covered in wounds.
“You smell disgusting,” he says, squeezing his nose.
“As do you. Are you ready?”
Brian grins, tying his gown around his waist. “Of course. Here,” he says, handing me the shard of glass. He unhooks the IV bag from its stand and drops it to the floor – taking the metal rod in his hand. We line up by the door and, one, two, three, push the handle down and ease it open. Brian goes first.
The room opens up into a long hallway, lit overhead by buzzing lights. The cement floor is cold beneath my bare feet. To our left and our right are a number of doors. I squint my eyes and glimpse through one of the door’s windows – and see two more beds, just like ours. “Are these all other patients?”
Something squeaks in the distance. A little mouse, maybe, scurrying across the floor. “We’ll come back to free them, after-” and then the door to our left swings open, and Miss Judith walks through, whistling – she wheels a silver cart, across which is draped a bloodied, torn outfit – the clothing worn by the newest victim of Van Winkle’s Nursing Home.
And then Miss Judith sees us. She shrieks, spinning the cart towards Brian and I. I roll out of the way, but Brian isn’t fast enough; the air is punched out of his gut as the metal crashes into him, rolls over him. Just as I regain my footing, Miss Judith, with all of her weight and her speed, sends me flying back against the wall. I feel a knot tangle around my heart and squeeze, pumping the juices out of my chest.
I watch through blurry eyes as Brian tries to swing the IV stand at Miss Judith from the floor – but his angle isn’t right and the attack is too slow. She grabs it and, after a short struggle, wrenches it free from his hands.
“I took care of you!” Miss Judith screams. She raises the metal stand above her head and swings it down. It connects with Brian’s skull with a resonant crack. He screams. “When the world was rushing at you, I made it all go away!” She raises the stand once more – and I watch in horror as it happens again, the rod cleaves down through the chilly air and smashes into Brian’s face. His nose splits, spurts out blood. “You can’t leave me! You need me!” Miss Judith pants and readies the rod once more. Brian curls up around his knees.
I brace my arms against the wall and stagger to my feet, the shard of glass digging into my fingers. I stagger forward; Miss Judith swings around, cracking me in the neck with the rod. I’m sent careening down to the floor, head thumping hard against the stone. I feel my consciousness melting and leaking out through the gash. One bad fall.
And so I take my last breath. It all fades to black, and finally-
No. I’m done with this stupid game. I’m done with last.
I take my hands and brace them against the concrete and push, push through the blazing agony. I plant my feet firmly on the floor and rise. Miss Judith thrusts the metal rod out into my gut – but I block the blow with my arms and hook my fingers around the end of the pole, and yank backwards. Miss Judith loses her balance and stumbles towards me; I reach out for her, catching her ponytail and gripping it with my bloody fingers. She drops the IV stand and it clatters to the floor.
Miss Judith flails and claws to free herself. “You need me, don’t you?” she shrieks. I imagine that her skin is rubber – that she is a costume worn by an old, wrinkled hag who feeds on the young. I take the glass shard to her neck and carve straight through. It leaves a trail of crimson, and soon Miss Judith goes limp. She collapses. Her nurse’s uniform is stained an ugly, bruised red. I stare down at her, watching until the helpless twitching stops.
I drop the glass shard and lean against the wall. Waiting for the pain to subside just a little. Then, I lean down and pick up the bloodied Brian, resting him atop the metal cart. I limp as I push it down the hallway to our left – phasing in and out of consciousness.
We come to a set of stairs, and I lug Brian off of the cart and drag him up. Stopping to rest. I feel like such an old man. But eventually we climb to the top and enter into what appears to be a home. Golden sunlight flickers through the blinds of the front door. I drag Brian and myself across the kitchen and swing open the door.
The sun blazes over the horizon. A warm breeze blows through the dancing trees of a suburban street. A dragonfly cuts through the air. “It’s still Summer, Brian,” I say. “It’s Summer!” I yell, laughing. “We still have all Summer! It’s amazing!” Brian’s leaking, mangled head lays limp against my shoulder.
I wave my bloody hands in the air and start to scream for help.